Michio Suzuki

Michio Suzuki (Japanese铃木 通 夫, born October 2, 1926 in Chiba, † 31 May 1998 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese mathematician who worked on the theory of finite groups.

Life

Suzuki studied at the University of Tokyo ( among others Kenkichi Iwasawa ), where he received his doctorate in 1952 at Shoukichi Iyanaga. From 1952 he was at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, where in 1955 he became professor. From 1968 until his death he was a professor at the Center for Advanced Study. 1956/57, he went to Harvard with Richard Brauer and 1960/61, at the University of Chicago. 1962/63, 1968/69 and 1981 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study, 1971 visiting professor in Tokyo, also made in 1980 ( and in Hokkaido and Osaka) and 1994 at the University of Padua.

Suzuki was a leader in the early efforts (from the 1950s) to the classification of finite simple groups. He was the first who took the important odd -order theorem of Walter Feit and John Griggs Thompson ( who proved the theorem in 1962 ) in attack - he proved in 1954 a special case, thus showing that the problem was vulnerable. In 1960 he discovered the Suzuki groups, an infinite family of finite simple groups ( as it turned out later, they were of Lie type). In 1968 he discovered a sporadic simple group that is named after him.

Suzuki was 1962/63 Guggenheim Fellow. In 1991 he became an honorary doctorate from the University of Kiel. In 1974 he received the Academy Award of the Japanese Academy of Sciences. In 1970 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Nice ( Characterizations of some finite simple groups).